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SUBJECT AND OBJECT, 



Subject and Object; 



AS CONNECTED WITH 



OUR DOUBLE BRAIN, 



A New Theory of Ca^tsation. 



J' 

By RfVERITY. 




"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas."— Virg. 



LONDON: 

LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 

1870. 



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CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I. Origin and Causation of Consciousness . . i 

II. Origin and Causation of Perception . . . ii 

III. New Theory of Causation 20 

IV. Dual Constitution of First Causation ... 34 
V. Our External and Internal Objectivity . . 43 

VI New Method of Inquiry by Causation ... 70 



PREFACE 



We have not yet found a complete philosophy in di- 
vinity, metaphysics, phrenology, or physiology. But 
perhaps we shall one day blend what is true of each 
into one correlated Whole. 

In studying the human brain and its comparative 
anatomy in connection with this idea, the Author has 
arrived at the views developed in the following pages 
relative to the functions of those central mechanisms 
of the brain which join together the Sensoriinn of 
the physiologists with the Convoluted Sni^face of Gall 
and Spiirzheim, and which thus complete its struc- 
tural and functional unity, duality, and multiplicity, 
as necessary conditions of all the forms of Conscious- 
ness, both in man and the mammalia. 

The Author himself belongs to those who rest in 
truth, and not in doubt. This has led him to make 
known his conclusions to all who take an interest in 
philosophy as the Science of Causation. They are 
not presented as complete expositions of the subject, 
but as ideas requiring the aid of time and thought to 
bring them to perfection. 



SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 



ORIGIN AND CAUSATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

I. All our knowledge comes from two sources. 
First, from the union of ourselves with the external 
world ; and then from the union of ourselves with our 
own ideas and sensations, as subject and object, by 
means of the conscious reflex action of the double 
brain. Hence, whilst we ever remain one in con- 
sciousness, as subject, we find ourselves related to two 
kinds of objectivity, one external, corresponding to 
our perceptions ; the other internal, corresponding to 
our ideas and sensations. Hence, also, these unions 
necessarily constitute two kinds of Experience, the 
external, represented in Philosophy by the Methods 
of Induction and Verification ; and the internal, repre- 
sented by those systems of Idealism which more par- 
ticularly appeal to the phenomena of Consciousness, 
as the basis of Certitude. These phenomena, how- 
ever, are not ultimate facts, as hitherto generally sup- 
posed, but are products arising from the combinations 
of the mental forces or potentialities of our nervous 



2 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 

system, either with one another, or with those of the 
external world, according to their respective laws and 
affinities. It will be necessary, therefore, to inquire, 
first of all, into the origin and causation of Conscious- 
ness ; its various kinds, as sensation, thought, emotion, 
and will ; and the parts and mechanisms of the cere- 
bral system with which they are correlated. The 
next objects in order of inquiry will then be the 
origin and causation of Perception ; the phenomena 
and theory of Causation ; the dual constitution of 
First Causation ; and lastly, the difference of know- 
ledge according as it is derived from External or 
Internal Objectivity; in other words, from Perception, 
or Ideation. All the materials will now be ready 
for constructing a new Method of Inquiry, based on 
the laws of causation and the logical order of our 
intellectual system. 

2. As far as we are capable of judging, there is 
no Consciousness in the lower forms of organic life. 
Even in man and the higher classes of animals we 
find most of the vital functions are performed by 
mechanisms which operate without consciousness; as 
the rythmic beating of the heart, the circulation of 
the blood, the assimilation of food, the nutrition and 
development of the body, the secretions of the glands 
and membranes, and the unconscious reflex actions 
of the brain and Spinal CJiord. These excitements 
are confined, for the most part, to automatic ganglia. 



Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 3 

and do not extend to the centres of sensation, ex- 
cept when heightened by abnormal disturbance. In 
ordinary respiration we are not conscious of the re- 
flex action of the nerves by which it is performed. 
But when congestion and pressure irritate the air- 
cells, we then feel sensations of distress. In such 
cases something additional takes place in the nervous 
centres, which calls into play the conditions neces- 
sary for consciousness. Hence certain boundaries are 
passed and other parts are excited, making the dif- 
ference between consciousness and unconsciousness. 
We have just said, when the respiratory nerves are 
acting under normal excitement only, there is no 
consciousness, but when this excitement is increased, 
then consciousness ensues. Now as the respiratory 
nerves derive their origin from special seats between 
the Restiforni and Olivary bodies in the Medulla 
Oblongata, what does this new state of consciousness 
signify but that the excitements of the Respiratory 
Tract become extended to the sensory centres of the 
Optic Thalami with which its fibres communicate .'' 
We then are conscious — which we were not before. 

3. The conditions necessary for consciousness are 
by no means simple. We have not only to account 
for that part of the phenomenon which is objective, 
but for the subjective "We" which is related to it; 
and the " We" necessarily involves a participation of 
the brain, or at least of one hemisphere, in communi- 

B 2 



4 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 

cation with the Optic Thalaini. The unusual excite- 
ment, therefore, attended with consciousness, coming 
from the pulmonary nerves must not only affect the 
Respiratory Tract, but must extend to the Optic 
Thalavii and the hemispheres themselves. This is 
not difficult to demonstrate. The longitudinal bands 
running along the posterior sulcus of the Spinal 
Chord, and terminating in the Optic Thalavii, show 
the channel by means of which the communication 
is effected. The problem we had to solve was how 
and where excitements coming up the Spinal Chord 
from the body and the Sensory Tract became trans- 
formed, or converted, into conscious states. We feel a 
sensation. Why do we do so 1 What are the parts 
concerned, and what the anatomical mechanism en- 
gaged .-* From the facts just stated we may consider 
that conscious life and personal sensation begin in 
the Optic Thalanii. 

4. These organs fulfil the function of Sensory 
Centres as the Corpora Striata fulfil that of Motor 
Centres, as we shall hereafter see. They are not 
otherwise appropriated ground. They supply all the 
conditions necessary for that function. They crown 
the summit of the Sensory Tract whose fibres plunge 
into their substance. They are the largest, most 
highly conditioned, and most central ganglia of the 
brain. Downwards, they are connected by bands and 
filaments with every part of the Sensory, Spinal, and 



Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 5 

Cerebellar systems ; and upwards, each on its side, 
with the Anterior, Middle, and Posterior Lobes ; with 
the converging and transverse fibres of the great 
hemispheric and interhemispheric commissure, the 
Corpus Callosicm; with the reflex and efferent fibres of 
the Motor centres, the Corpora Striata; with the Qua- 
drigeminay the Fornix, and the complex apparatus of 
expression at the base of the brain, which terminates 
in the' Tuber Cinereiim, the Corpora Albicantia, and 
the commissure of tHe optic nerves. They commu- 
nicate intimately with one another, and with the 
opposite hemisphere, not only by their own decus- 
sating filaments from side to side, but by the bands 
of the Posterior and Middle Commissures. In short, 
there is no part of the nervous system with which 
they are not either directly or indirectly connected ; 
so that whilst by this order and arrangement our con- 
sciousness .is ever changing in form and expression, 
and undergoing endless modifications during a life- 
time of thought and action, commensurate with what 
afiects us both from Within and from Without, yet, 
owing to the perfect anatomical mechanism by which 
the unity of the Thalami and the brain is effected, 
we never feel otherwise than one and the same indi- 
vidual. We are one, and we are many, and this is 
the character of our consciousness. 

5. These are their titles to be considered the seat 
of our Personal Sense, where the various specific 



6 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 

excitements of our cerebral system, of our nerves of 
sense, and common sensibility become transformed 
into conscious states by uniting with this special ac- 
tivity of the Thalanii. In this way do they give us that 
ever-present, deep-rooted, organic Sense of our Per- 
sonal Self, whose unity underlies all our various and 
varying states of consciousness, in sensation, percep- 
tion, thought, emotion, feeling, and will. And through 
the conscious reflex action of 'Ca^ Anterior Lobes, as 
subject and object, we have the corresponding idea of 
the unity of our Personal Self, and of ourselves ; the 
sense and the idea forming together that complex 
Ego, whose unity and multiplicity of consciousness 
have been the despair of metaphysical thinkers. The 
Ego, or Spirit of Man, is thus, not a product of 
introspective Reason alone, but a synthetic fact of 
Sensation also. 

6. It is well known that if any part of the Poste- 
rior Spinal Chord is injured by disease or accident, 
the parts below the injury lose their susceptibility of 
feeling. Irritation of the limb will indeed produce 
unconscious reflex movement ; but all communication 
with the Thalanii by means of the posterior longi- 
tudinal bands being cut off, consciousness is lost. 
This shows again how all forms of excitement are 
carried to the Thalanii, which not only convert them 
into sensations, each after its kind, but make them at 
the same time part and parcel of our conscious selves, 



Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 7 

which before they were not. The special quahty of 
action belonging to the Thalaini combines itself with 
the excitements coming to them from the brain and 
Spinal Chord, so that these together constitute by 
their union a cause of which sensation and conscious- 
ness in all its various forms are equivalent effects. 

7. We now come to a most important question as 
to the modits operandi of our mental mechanism. 
Are both Thalanii necessary for all forms of con- 
sciousness } Does not consciousness necessarily imply 
conditions of duality — those of Subject and Object — 
the conscious subject, and the object of which it is 
conscious 1 It would seem, therefore, that subject and 
object must be identified in sensation as well as in 
thought and other forms of consciousness. We can- 
not be conscious, for instance, of a sensation, before it 
has conditions of existence ; and where else can it be 
formed in all its integrity, and be posited objectively, 
but in one of the Thalami, which then sympathetically 
and inductively affects its correlated fellow-organ en 
rapport with the hemisphere representing the subject, 
and so full consciousness of feeling and thought 
results } that is, there are present in one hemisphere 
the subject who is conscious, and, in the other, the 
feeling of which he is conscious ; subject and object 
being identified in thought or feeling through the 
duplicate structural mechanism of the brain, as already 
explained. 



8 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 

8. It will follow from a consideration of these 
views that all abnormal and peculiar states of per- 
sonal consciousness, and of heightened or perverted 
sensibility, will be especially due to functional or 
organic lesions of the Tlialami ; and that partial or 
complete interruption of the communications between 
them and their corresponding hemispheres, will satis- 
factorily explain the curious phenomena of double 
consciousness after recovery from accidents affecting 
the brain, or after the termination of some cases of 
brain fever. In these cases, only one Thalamus and 
one hemisphere are in their natural state. In the 
same way, we can account for the unconsciousness of 
the true somnambulist, and of the magnetised clair- 
voyant, whose subjective hemisphere becomes pas- 
sively respondent to the influence of the magnetiser. 
The isolation of each hemisphere, too, from contrac- 
tion of the folds of the Callosuni, and consequent 
pressure of the subjacent parts and the Thalavii, may 
reasonably be regarded as the proximate cause of 
sleep. Hemispheric intercommunication and con- 
sciousness are then simultaneously suspended. But 
when excitements of portions of the brain overcome 
this contractile tendency, and traverse the connecting 
commissures, both the hemispheres become partially 
engaged, and a confused state of consciousness results. 
Then is sleep broken by dreams. Sleep is thus as 
much a positive as a negative state of the brain, pro- 



Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 9 

ceeding from contraction of the Corpus Callosiun upon 
itself as a ball, and consequent suspension of inter- 
communication between the hemispheres, particularly 
when exhausted by fatigue or debilitating illness. 
There is then no antagonising influence to the con- 
traction of the Callosiun. It is physical pressure on 
these parts which produces the abnormal sleep in 
cases of apoplexy and depression of skull. So, again, 
sleep ensues when they are disabled under the sedative 
influence of alcoholic drinks, opium, and anaesthetics. 
9. The TJialami and the Anterior Lobes may thus 
be regarded as the essential anatomical conditions of 
self-consciousness and personality. These exist in 
more or less force in all the Vertebrata, but are 
absent in the inferior forms of animal life. In man 
alone are they complete, and further enhanced by his 
higher mental and psychical potentialities. Through 
the duplicate and reflex action of the Thalavii we 
are conscious we feel ourselves one and the same 
person ; through that of the Anterior Lobes we know 
it, and know that we know it ; through both, in con- 
junction with the component parts of our nervous 
centres, we obtain a perfect synthesis of our Ego, 
which we may define as a Conscious Centre in sym- 
pathetic correlation with all the duplicate parts of 
our organic whole. Were it not for the second 
hemisphere, we should have, not a conscious, but an 
automatic life. The double brain is an exquisite 



lo Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 

instrument by means of which we are made con- 
scious of the external world, our own selves, and the 
relations of the two together through sensations, per- 
ceptions, and ideas. We cannot constitute our Ego, 
or affirm ourselves in consciousness, except in union 
with sensations or ideas ; and these, again, according 
to the law of causation, cannot be caused and pro- 
duced, except by the union of ourselves with the 
external world. We thus owe our conscious existence 
to the objectivities with which we are continually 
combining. When these unions cease, consciousness 
ceases also, so that, when considered per se, we, as 
subject, are a mere potentiality. Hence the necessity 
of the double brain to supply the relation of Subject 
and Object. 



n. 

ORIGIN AND CAUSATION OF PERCEPTION. 

10. It is now generally admitted that we can only 
know external objects in the way we are constituted 
to know them. We may know them truthfully as 
far as our powers extend, but not per se, should our 
powers not extend so far, of which, however, we are 
ignorant. We can, therefore, only perceive them in 
relation to ourselves, that is, in a limited manner, 
according to the measure of our limitations, if we are 
so limited. Hence Perception is supposed by some 
to be simply a mental affection — a modification of 
our consciousness, or of ourselves, and consequently, 
that all our knowledge is subjective. But a short 
examination of these notions will show they are 
erroneous. 

11. An external something we call an object acts 
upon our Sensory and Percipient apparatus by ex- 
citing and uniting with their activities. By this act 
of union sensation and perception are caused and 
produced. What then is the cause of perception, 
and what is perception itself.? Evidently, the union 
in one of the percipient and the noumenon ; the per- 
cipient, as an ultimate fact, having a susceptibility, 
or property, of being conscious of external things 



12 Origin and Causation of Perception. 

and their qualities. It is then said, zve undergo a 
modification of our consciousness. But take away 
the external object, and perception instantly ceases. 
Or, remove the percipient, and it equally ceases. So 
that, separated, the percipient and the object are 
only potential co-existences. But directly they come 
together, they by their act of union constitute the 
cause of perception, and, by the union itself, they 
constitute also perception as an effect. So that, in 
analysing perception, if we find it is a mental affec- 
tion of the subject, it is so solely by reason of the 
causative presence of the external noumenon. 

12. We know nothing of the percipient per se, 
or of things per se ; we only know them, as a com- 
pound, when united in perception. Nor can this be 
otherwise. For how can we be conscious of an object 
without its presence in the percipient subject .'' It 
would be expecting to have an effect from one thing 
alone ; but we shall see presently that no causation 
can proceed from unity. This being the case, per- 
ception can only take place by the union of the two, 
viz., the percipient and the noumenon. It may thus 
be said to bring within our consciousness the nou- 
menal qualities of the external world, united with the 
correlated powers of the percipient subject. But some 
will still say that perception is only a modification 
of the subject. Granted. What, however, is this 
modification, but the virtual presence of the noumenon 



Origin and Causation of Perception. 13 

in the percipient ? The two together, by uniting into 
one, constitute a cause, producing the modification 
called perception, as an effect. Hence the union of 
the noumenon with the subject is immediate. And as 
the noumenon by its presence is the only new ele- 
ment introduced into our consciousness, we are con- 
sequently conscious in perception of the noumenal 
qualities of external objects. Our knowledge, there- 
fore, although relative to the powers of the percipient, 
is certain, and truthful, and founded on sure grounds. 
13. Our experience of external noumena corre- 
sponds with our experience of internal noumena, or 
ideas, when it relates to analogous objects; showing 
that the modification which cannot come of itself, is 
really the presence of the external noumenon in the 
subject; so that our knowledge objectively and sub- 
jectively, being concordant and the same, is of an 
absolute kind as far as it goes, and is only relative 
to the limitation of the subject, if such be the case — 
bearing out Spinoza's sixth axiom that a true idea 
agrees with its correlated object. If, on the contrary, 
external noumena were not truthfully correlated with 
the percipient of the subject, then our ideas and our 
perceptions would not be in harmony. Were the 
noumena different, the resulting perceptions would 
also be different by the law of causation, and would 
not harmonise with our ideas ; whereas our ideas and 
perceptions are in perfect accordance, with this dif- 



14 Origin and Causation of Perception. 

ference only, which corroborates the point in question, 
that the accession of the organs of sense, and the 
actual presence of the external object, intensify the 
state of consciousness, but do not modify its nature. 

14. What, then, is the difference between per- 
ceptions and ideas ? It is the actual presence of the 
external noumenon in the one case, and the absence 
of it in the other ; and this implies the participation 
of the senses and the Sensory Tract in the causation 
of perception. A larger area and additional parts of 
the nervous system are engaged. Therefore, although 
our ideas agree with our perceptions, they are not ab- 
solutely identical, because they do not involve the 
actual presence of the external element. It is true, 
however, that the external object at some former 
time left an impression in the Anterior Lobes which 
is recalled in ideation. What does this mean but 
that external noumena participate in the causation 
of our ideas by their virtual, as they do in that of 
our perceptions by their actual presence } 

15. What can Idealism answer to this? It has 
no ground to stand upon. The reflex action of the 
Anterior Lobes suffices alone for the causation of ideas ; 
but for perceptions we want both the Anterior Lobes 
and the Sensory apparatus as well. Ideas and per- 
ceptions have this in common, that they both require 
the Anterior Lobes for their production. This is the 
reason why ideas are correlated with their objects 



Origin and Causation of Perception. 15 

without being identical with them, and why a true 
idea must agree with its object. Our mental powers, 
like external noumena, are merely potential, and 
require the actual or virtual presence of objects for 
the causation and production of consciousness, whether 
under the form of perceptions or ideas. Fichte 
begged the whole question when he assumed " the 
activity of the Ego " in order to construct the external 
world. This activity was the act of ideation ; and 
ideation without subject and object could not take 
place. Causation requires the union of the two in 
one, and that one is the mental product. The unity 
and multiplicity of consciousness has been already 
discussed in a former paper, to which the reader is 
referred. 

16. In this way there exists a hierarchy of ideas, 
from sense to our higher forms of thought, perfectly 
agreeing with their appropriate counterparts in the 
external world, though not identical with them ; and 
this doctrine of Proclus and Hegel is upheld by the 
two kinds of Experience, the external and the internal, 
we appeal to in the Methods of Consciousness and 
Verification employed by Descartes and Bacon. 
There is partial truth, no doubt, in both Idealism and 
Realism, but more truth in both together. The great 
defect of Idealism is, not seeing that external nou- 
mena are component parts with the percipient in the 
formation of perceptions. It calls these modifications 



i6 Origin and Causation of Perception. 

of the subject only, but it does not see that no per- 
ceptive change can occur without the addition of 
something external to the new state of consciousness. 
Changes do not come from nothing. As said before, 
this new something is the noumenon, which, uniting 
with the percipient in one, constitutes simultaneously 
the cause, and the modification as effect. The modi- 
fication is in fact the noumenon itself posited in the 
percipient, and therefore in our consciousness, which 
establishes Truth, and at the same time destroys 
Idealism and Scepticism at one blow, by absorbing 
them both in one synthesis, viz., the perception itself 
And we know this must be so, by the fundamental 
law of causation, that the effect is in the cause, and 
the cause in the effect, and that one is equal to the 
other. What we call intelligence is only nature made 
conscious in ourselves, and this is effected by the 
duplicate constitution of Subject and Object in our 
cerebral system. 

17. We thus in every perception not only make 
and modify our consciousness, but are continually 
developing and transcending it, as it were, by the 
adjunction of external elements ; perception being 
the union in one of the Subjective percipient and 
the Objective noumenon. Perception could not take 
place without them both. And it is scarcely a stretch 
of language to say, that our consciousness in percep- 
tion is as much objective as subjective. We have no 



Origin and Causation of Perception. 17 

conscious perception until the noumenon by a series 
of cumulative causations in the nervous apparatus 
becomes united to the percipient, and then afterwards 
the percipient to the sensory centres of the Thalaini, 
the seat of personal consciousness. 

18. The five senses and the nerves of common 
sensibility have their seats of sensation in the poste- 
rior columns of the Spinal Chord. These run in a 
body through the Thalauii to the group of organs in 
the Anterior Lobes which subserve perception, and all 
sensory excitements coming from the organs of sense 
and sensibility pursue the same track, gaining sensa- 
tion and consciousness in their passage through the 
Thalanii, and occasioning perceptions, emotions, and 
so-called modifications, each after its kind, by union 
with the several potentialities of the percipient and 
sentient parts of the brain with which they are cor- 
related in function. Form, colour, taste, touch, music, 
love, beauty, sympathy, passion, thought, will, wonder» 
and every form of conscious life are thus all com- 
pounds of ourselves and the external world, and when 
we feel and perceive them, and know that we feel and 
perceive them, we do so through the reflex action 
of the Thalami with one another, and through that 
of the hemispheres which takes place by means of 
the commissural transverse bands of the anterior and 
posterior folds of the Corpus Callosuni, as seen in the 
anatomical construction of the brain. 

C 



1 8 Origin and Causation of Perception. 

19. Again, the Anterior Lobes being in direct 
communication with the Thalanii througli their own 
efferent fibres, and with the whole cerebral system. 
through the radiating fasciculi of the Callosicm, 
all perceptions and ideas report themselves to the 
Sensory Centres, on the one hand, and on the other, 
rouse into sympathetic action, through interior lines 
of communication, those powers and motive affections 
seated in the Convoluted Surface of the brain, accord- 
ing to the circumstances of the case, and what is 
occupying the thoughts and attention of the individual 
at the time. 

20. We are all born with a definite system of 
powers, which constitutes our human individuality, and 
whose activity is our consciousness. These powers 
being in harmony with external nature, our percep- 
tions and ideas are likewise in harmony ; for our ideas 
are nothing more than their internal activity, and we 
know that our perceptions consist of this activity in 
union with external noumena. We have thus know- 
ledge through both our internal and external expe- 
rience. We have a world Within and a world Without, 
with a truthful relation between them. It is our 
warrant that we see external things as they really 
are, and that our knowledge, although relative to our 
powers, is certain and absolute. 

21. In conclusion, it may be shortly said, there 
are potentialities in the percipient to be conscious of 



Origin and Causation of Perception. 19 

external noumena. Hence perception, which is this 
consciousness, takes place when the two come to- 
gether, and so we are conscious of noumena, or things 
pel'- se. This happens as the effect of a cause, and the 
cause is the act of union, in one, of the percipient and 
the noumenon. Take away one or the other, and 
perception ceases also. You destroy the cause, and 
the effect ceases. Perceptive ideas, however, remain, 
which lie latent in us until they enter into new mental 
combinations with other ideas according to their 
potentialities and the laws of causation. 



III. 

NEW THEORY OF CAUSATION. 

22. The prevailing theory of Causation at present 
is very much the same as that handed down to us in 
the writings of Hume. No progress has been made, 
so Philosophy is now in consequence thrown aside with 
contempt and taunted with impotence. It is but too 
true that our latest metaphysical writers still teach us 
the old doctrine that in causation the cause is the 
antecedent, and the effect the sequent, and that there 
is no necessary connection between them. Reason 
and experience, however, forbid our assent to this 
proposition, and it will be found on examination that 
the very reverse is the case. 

23. What, then, is causation ? It consists simply 
of potential objects, more or less in number, uniting 
together in one for the production of an effect ; their 
act of union being the cause ; the union itself, the effect. 
We apprehend causation by our reason just as we 
perceive events and facts by our perceptive faculties. 
When we witness an instance of causation, it is our 
percipient which takes cognisance of the phenomenal 
part, namely, the objects defo?'^ uniting together, 
called the antecedent, and the same objects when 
united, called the sequent. But it is our reason which 



New Theory of Causation. 21 

apprehends the dynamic or causative element in the 
act of union constituting the cause, and the causation. 
As long as these objects remain separate and distinct, 
they are not the cause. They are only co-existences. 
But as soon as they unite together in one, they be- 
come sii!mltaneoii.sly both cause and effect. We then 
cannot separate them in fact, or in idea. Hence cause 
and effect differ only in this, that the forces or powers 
which are dynamic in the act of causation, become 
again potential, or static, in the effect. It is the law 
of the conservation of force. As the act of union is 
the cause, and the union itself, the effect, one cannot 
take place without the other. Like object and subject 
in thought and perception, they are necessarily con- 
nected and correlated. One implies the other. The 
cause is in the effect, and the effect is in the cause, 
and they are co-equal. 

24. There are, therefore, no such states or relations 
as antecedents and sequents between cause and effect. 
The objects called antecedents exist only as such 
before the causation takes place ; and herein has been 
the source of error. As a cause, therefore, must 
necessarily be more than one, there is a fatal fallacy 
in Spinoza's First Definition, where he makes a thing 
its own cause, and so involving existence ; and there 
is the same fallacy in his Third Proposition where he 
speaks of one thing as the possible cause of another. 

25. When we have seen and understood instances 



2 2 New Theory of Causation. 

of causation, we acquire the generic idea of its uni- 
versality as law, and, similar objects and circumstances 
presenting themselves, we know beforehand from this 
knowledge, that on their uniting together, cause and 
effect will ensue, just as we know by experience on 
seeing an apple that tasting it will give us a sensa- 
tion of tartness as effect. Our faculties of taste 
and causality are so far analogous in their mode of 
operation, that when they meet and unite with their 
respective appropriate objects, we experience the 
sensation in one case, and apprehend the fact and 
idea of causation in the other. It is a property of 
our reason to apprehend dynamic phenomena, and 
so give us the idea of causation. In Hume's loose 
language, however, " this inference is nothing but the 
effect of custom on the imagination," as if inferences 
were not mental facts as solid as any other. If, 
indeed, we interpret " custom " as our observation 
of the phenomenal union of potential objects, and 
"imagination" as our faculty of causality which appre- 
hends their dynamic act of union, the explanation 
will be more complete. As said before, the error has 
lain in regarding objects before their union as ante- 
cedents of an effect, whereas until united they are 
not a cause, and have no nexus whatever with the 
effect. Hence this misnomer and false presentation of 
the case has been the foundation of the erroneous 
doctrine of antecedents and sequents in causation ; 



New Theory of Causation. 23 

but we have seen there is no such separation between 
cause and effect. " Ab actu ad potentiam valet con- 
sequentia." 

26. All existences, all phenomena, mental as well 
as physical, are effects of causation. It has been 
shown that a cause is necessarily compound, and 
that no causation can proceed from unity, one re- 
maining ever one, sterile of productivity. Also, that 
a number of potential objects is necessary to con- 
stitute a cause for the generation of effect, these 
objects uniting together in one under a new form by 
virtue of the affinities of their several potentialities. 
Without this causative union, no event, phenomenon, 
motion, consciousness, or knowledge is possible. It 
was probably thus that numbers, as symbols and 
representatives of things in combination, constituted 
the principle of causation with Pythagoras, In che- 
mistry, oxygen and hydrogen unite together in one 
as a cause to produce water as an effect ; so do the 
acid and the alkali unite together in one as a cause 
to produce the resulting neutral salt as an effect. In 
metaphysics, the percipient of the subject and the 
noumena of the external world unite together in one 
as a cause to produce perception as an effect ; and 
again, our reason and instances of causation, by 
uniting together, produce the idea of causation as an 
effect. So do our ideas in the thinking subject unite 
together in one as a cause to produce other ideas as 



24 New Theory of Causation. 

an effect. The major and minor premisses of the 
syllogism contain the ideas which uniting in one as 
a cause produce the conclusion or judgment as an 
effect. What are our judgments and determinations 
but effects of the causative unions of our mental 
potentialities? And, most wonderful of all, what 
are our free wills but the components of our own 
selves united in one as cause and effect by our own 
free and voluntary mental action, which is itself 
a product deriving from First Causation ? When- 
ever ideas contain potentialities, and they combine 
together, causation is sure to ensue. New ideas are 
then brought into existence, because a cause is 
formed, and an effect produced. When we study a 
great picture, and it continually grows upon us the 
more we see it, the object in that case surpasses the 
subject. By degrees, however, the objective action 
of the picture raises the subject, where possible, to its 
own level. By continually uniting itself with the 
relatively weaker power of the beholder, a series of 
causations takes place, which end in the improve- 
ment and elevation of the subject, as effect. The 
potentialities of the picture and the subject are then 
united into one. The same continuous causation 
operates in education and instruction. 

27. In chemical and mechanical science, cau.sa- 
tion is simple and obvious ; but in medicine and 
physiology, in politics, the social sciences, political 



New Theory of Causation. 25 

economy, the philosophy of history and metaphysics, 
cumulative successions of cause and effect, from con- 
tinuous adjunction of new elements, intervene between 
the first and last stages of the ultimate event This 
is well illustrated in the series of changes which occur 
before the food we eat becomes converted into or- 
ganic material, and also in the number of cumulative 
causations which take place in our cerebral me- 
chanisms when sensations are transformed into per- 
ceptions, perceptions into ideas, ideas into emotions, 
and the whole mental system into one synthesis of will 
and action. This cumulative and synthetic causation 
is the nexus between famine and revolution ; between 
food -restricting laws, starvation, arrested develop- 
ment, and physical and social misery, as in Ireland. 
It operates in the complex problems of prices and 
exchanges, of demand and supply, of consumption 
and production, and explains many characteristics 
of national development from plurality of races. 

28, Again, what are the typical forms, or models 
of organic life as they exist potentially in the seed 
or cell } They are aggregations of latent powers in 
union with matter, held together as a whole by the 
principle of causation, and developing themselves by 
successive acts of union with the elements and forces 
of the external world. So that a special factor must 
be conjoined with the matter of the cell to have con- 
stituted together the synthetic cause of being and 



2 6 New Theory of Causation. 

development according as it is a plant, an animal, or 
a man. The theory of Natural Selection, as the origin 
of species, may find a place under an imperfect system 
of Induction ; but it could not exist under the stricter 
test of the laws of causation. There can be no series 
of typical developments, or organic differentiations, 
without pre-existing potentialities commensurate with 
the effects ; and where during the ages was their locus 
in quo except in the original germs } But there can 
only exist a limited amount of special force or causa- 
tive power in each particular type of seed, or cell ; 
otherwise, by the hypothesis of continuous unlimited 
evolution, the worm we tread upon might be possibly 
a potential C^sar, or Shakespeare. Effects would 
then be greater than their causes, something would be 
created out of nothing, and miracles would supersede 
the laws of causation. The fact is, all causation is 
definite, and man too, and there is the Infinite beyond, 
out of which we are compelled to educe the origin of 
the Finite, thus bringing us back to the to ari^ipov 
of Anaximander. All divine manifestations to be 
apprehended by man must be in union with matter, 
whereby they become finite and intelligible. The 
new existence thus becomes separated from the un- 
manifested Infinite, and receives an individuality of 
its own. The act of union is First Causation, and 
the union itself, as an object, remains in a state of 
potentiality, until by combinations with other poten- 



New Theory of Causation. 27 

tialities, new causes are produced, playing their part 
in the economy of man and nature. 

29. A cause being only the dynamic state of an 
effect, and an effect the static state of a cause, a cause 
consequently has no existence of its own in time and 
space apart from the effect, and vice versa. It is 
formed out of the potentialities of the Present alone. 
There is, therefore, no such reality as the cause of a 
cause, or a chain of causation, other than a cumulative 
causation. The components of cause and effect being 
the same, and their act of union alone being the cause, 
it is clear that the cause is limited to this act of union, 
the union itself being the effect. If we try and go 
further in causation and inquire why and how the po- 
tential components of a cause form a particular effect 
when coming together, we are obliged to confess our 
ignorance, and to refer the matter to the nature of 
things, in other words, to First Causation. We find, 
therefore, we are unable to inquire with effect into the 
cause of the cause, and that we can only deal with 
the components of the cause and effect, as separate 
and distinct potential objects, and not with the cause 
of the cause which has no existence for us in time 
and space. 

30. Thus the act of union of oxygen and hydrogen 
and of their uniting media, intelligent or other, is the 
cause of water ; the union itself being the effect, water, 
under particular conditions of time and space, accord- 



2 8 New Theory of Causation. 

ing to its relation with the uniting means. Their 
united potentiaHties when in act, or dynamic, con- 
stitute the cause ; when in equihbrium, or static, they 
constitute the effect. If we go further, and inquire 
into the causation of oxygen and hydrogen, and of 
their uniting media, as the components of the cause 
of water, we do not by so doing inquire into the cause 
of the cause, but we are dealing with separate and 
distinct potential objects, which have c-h of them 
their own particular cause, and between which there 
is no causal nexus whatever until the moment of union 
and of causation occurs. There is consequently no 
chain of causation, each group of cause and effect 
arising out of the union of its own special and separate 
potentialities, being immediately referable to First 
Causation. In the case of oxygen or hydrogen, they 
are simple bodies incapable of further analysis, so 
that we can only say of them, they are ultimate facts, 
or instances of First Causation, consisting of poten- 
tiality in a subject of inherence, beyond which lies the 
Potential Infinite, outside our intellectual sphere. In 
this Potential Infinite we are compelled to place the 
synthetic unity of all Existence, ourselves included, 
and to this also to refer the nexus of causative power 
which binds them together in one harmonious whole. 
Philosophy thus afhrms under a form of its o\\'n the 
idea which is generally entertained of Providence, or 
the immanent presence of the Deity, as the source 



New Theory of Causation. 29 

of power and causation, which in divinity will pro- 
bably be the sole dogma of the universal Church of 
the future. 

31. Causations are, therefore, organic wholes con- 
fined to actual phenomena in Present time. Hence 
the idea of a chain of universal causation, other than 
what is cumulative and synthetic, must be limited to 
separate causes and effects arising out of universal 
potentiality of causation, subservient to law, and the 
principle of unity and uniformity above mentioned, 
residing in the Potential Infinite outside our causality. 
Hence also the idea of Foreknowledge has no corre- 
lation with external fact. When we say it was in the 
future, or it was foreknown, that an event should take 
place which did take place, we get the idea by sepa- 
rating the relation of time from that of fact. We 
transpose the past into the present, and the present 
into the future, which is only an alternative way of 
saying, the event took place. In relation to past 
time it was in the future, but in relation to the fact 
of causation, it is in Present time alone. The fallacy 
of the idea of foreknowledge arises from intermixing 
two orders of knowledge, viz., that of time, being the 
result of ideation, and that of fact, being the result 
of perception. In a few words, an event which has 
not taken place, is not susceptible of being known. 
There is, therefore, no such reality as foreknowledge. 
It is a contradiction in terms. And we only conceive 



30 New Theory of Causation. 

the idea of it by making the past as if the present, 
and the present as if the future, relatively to the 
event, which is a delusive sport of the imagination, 
and not a true premiss to reason from. 

32. Also, in the question of reconciling our Free- 
will with Causation, we, as conscious potential ob- 
jects, are free to employ all the separate potentialities 
within ourselves and around us in the formation of 
causes, determinations, and wills, without the hin- 
drance of an imaginary chain of causation, rigorously 
subject, however, to the immutable laws of our 
nature and those of the external world. 

33. In trying to solve some of the more difficult 
cosmical problems of existence, we are too apt to 
forget that our powers are limited, and, therefore, 
most likely to be inadequate to the task. There 
exists no doubt an invisible world beyond our per- 
ception, and much that is shaded from our eyes. 
The invisible realities of nature are as certain as 
those we see. Analyse the causation of a plant's de- 
velopment, and we find there must be a cause com- 
mensurate with such an effect. Besides the matter 
of the plant, its chemistry, and its form, there is the 
potentiality of becoming a plant residing in its matter. 
This potentiality is invisible, but it is as truly present 
as though seen by our eyes. It is seen by our reason 
only, manifesting itself in development, which is an 
effect of its presence in union Avith matter, and we 



New Theory of Causation. 31 

know it is so, just as we know by reason there must 
be a cause for the motion and direction of a cannon- 
ball. If we attempt to investigate the nature and 
form of this invisible potentiality apart from the 
matter in which it inheres, we are baffled at the very 
beginning. We find it eludes our perceptive power. 
We have no faculties to seize or apprehend its ex- 
istence except our reason, and reason can only see 
it as the dynamic element of an operative cause in 
union with matter. We are compelled, therefore, to 
regard it as an invisible reality beyond the reach of 
our senses, but seen by our causality as a manifesta- 
tion of the causative power of God pen^'ading the 
world " in whom we live^ and move, and have our 
being" — a manifestation of the Word in flesh and 
matter. 

34. By applying this Theory of Causation as an 
instrument of inquiry into the constitution of Con- 
sciousness and Perception, it will have been seen that 
sufficient knowledge has been obtained to bridge over 
the chasm between man and the external world ; to 
solve the scepticisms of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, 
and Kant, and to reconcile and identify Idealism and 
Realism in one common synthesis. By this means 
our external and internal Experiences, represented 
by our ideas and our perceptions of existence, are 
kept distinct, and not confused with one another, and 
yet are brought into one harmonious whole, so that 



32 New Theory of Causation. 

a fruitful union favourable to the progress of Know- 
ledge is effected between the Methods of Induction 
and Verification, on the one hand, and that of Causa- 
tion, on the other. The end and aim of this Method is 
to determine by analysis find synthesis the causation 
and constitution of objects, facts, events, phenomena, 
processes, states, conditions, and relations, both in 
ourselves, and the external world, and their various 
combinations, so as to give to Knowledge that cer- 
tainty, completeness, and logical precision now want- 
ing in the analogies and co-ordinations of Induction 
and Positivism, in which the discovery and complex 
constitution of causes are left entirely to the genius of 
each individual. 

35. Both Bacon and the Positivists expressly re- 
pudiate researches into causes, not being aware in 
what they consist, and so by this omission they do 
not comprise the highest judicial power of our intel- 
lectual system in their Methods of Inquiry. Until 
this want is supplied, as here proposed, we cannot 
be said to possess a complete method, however well 
based on Experiment and Verification, inasmuch as 
the principle of Causation when rightly understood 
underlies all knowledge, and is all knowledge, and, 
as method, is the final instrument of inquiry and cri- 
terion of truth and certitude. It is the law of change 
and creation as well as that of unity, order, indivi- 
duality, and existence. Above all, it is the real 



New Theory of Causation. T^-i^ 

organon of Philosophy and Science, but philosophy 
within the limits of the human intellect. These limits 
extend from sense to First Causation, but not to the 
infinities of God and Matter, which being incogitable 
belong to Faith and Intuition alone. In this way 
only can we place man and nature, as Subject and 
Object, in the supreme Identity of the Potential 
Infinite. 



IV. 

THE DUAL CONSTITUTION OF FIRST CAUSATION. 

36. Metaphysical writers never fail to ascribe the 
origin of the world and the human race to a First 
Cause, having no distinct idea what it means. By 
people in general this generic idea is made a Personal 
Unity of some kind which they speak of as Infinite. 
But all personality being highly conditioned, must be 
finite, and we have no experience of personality or 
consciousness without the double TJialami, as we have 
no experience of intelligence without the reflex action 
of the Anterior Lobes, as we have seen. It has been 
shown, too, in a preceding chapter, that a cause is 
necessarily compound, and contained in its effect, so 
the idea of its singleness cannot be a true one, as 
there can be no such correlated object. The world, 
however, as well as ourselves, is full of first causes, or 
instances of First Causation, but there is no such 
reality as One First Cause, in the usual sense of the 
word, and consequently no true idea of the same. 

37. We must remount further up in the scale of 
thought and being to arrive at the source and consti- 
tution of First Causation. From whatever point we 
start in nature, or in ourselves, with our investigation 
of laws and causes, we come always and everywhere 



Dual Constitution of First Causation. 35 

at last to ultimate facts, and phenomena, and causes, 
which we are unable to analyse further than that they 
consist of some kind of force, property, or causative 
power in union with matter as its subject of inherence. 
Although we may thus analyse all synthetic bodies 
into their simple elements, the causative power which 
holds them together, and constitutes their individu- 
ality, eludes our grasp. They are ultimate facts 
deriving from First Causation. 

38. As we ascend from inorganic forms through 
organic to self-conscious and self-intelligent man, the 
synthesis of every link of the series becomes more and 
more conditioned by the adjunction of additional ele- 
ments of causation, until we are exhausted by the very 
contemplation of ourselves, and of our own capacities 
at the summit of existence. We are lost in wonder 
amongst these numberless instances of First Causation. 
But although our perception stops at the confines of the 
phenomenal world, our reason takes us a step further, 
for through it we apprehend the dynamic element of 
these first causations, launching us in the Infinite 
beyond sense, but keeping itself within the boundaries 
of the finite world which are likewise its own. We 
then stand on holy ground in the presence of the 
Deity. But our reason tells us in an absolute manner 
that no causation can proceed from unity, and postu- 
lates the dual constitution of every first causation 
through the union in one of the potential with the 

D 2 



36 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 

material element. Both these elements are in the 
cause, and both in the effect, the one visible to reason, 
the other to sense. 

39. But all the finite individualities of the universe 
and of ourselves are identified through first causation 
in a principle of Unity by reason of their dynamic 
correlations. Hence we see the Potential Infinite, or 
God, as the objective reality and source of causation. 
All power comes from God. And our intuitions con- 
firm the voice of reason. We apprehend God as the 
Infinite, by Faith alone, which is the divine presence 
in our consciousness operating through potentialities 
connected with our organism. And we apprehend 
the Spiritual and the Infinite by our psychical sense 
with as good a warrant as we do the Phenomenal 
by our outward senses — a truth embodied by the 
ancients in their beautiful fable of Eros and Psyche. 

40. In Philosophy, this inward sense of the In- 
finite is the Ecstacy of Plotinus, and the Intellectual 
Intuition of Schelling ; in Religion, it is exemplified 
in the Nirvana of the Buddhists, and in the trances 
of St. Paul, of St. Francis, and St. Theresa. From 
these Infinities of Power and Matter, whose external 
objectivity is established both by faith and by the 
laws of causation, our reason deduces the unity, finity, 
and multiplicity of existence, and finds their corre- 
lations and counterparts reflected in ourselves, the 
union of the two orders of being in knowledge, as 



Dual Constitution of First Causation. 37 

Subject and Object, as Ideal and Real, being the ulti- 
mate exhaustive synthesis of human capacity. Our 
own finity is the measure of the world we know. 
Beyond, lies the Unknown Infinite, whatever that 
may be, and First Causation, the furthest reach of 
our reason, links us to it. Man and the Universe 
are the most highly conditioned unities of existence. 
They are two mighty aggregations of forces embraced 
by the idea of First Causation, and First Causation 
is God in act of union with Matter {iiatura natiirans) 
the union itself being the sensible and intelligible 
world {natura natiiratd). 

41. We have here an insight into the constitution 
of the Trinity — an idea which lay deep in the mental 
system of the Oriental races, and which, handed down 
to us by tradition, still constitutes in a modified form 
the mystery of our Christian Godhead. Why is it a 
mystery } Because we interpret the highest meta- 
physical problem of our reason by a lower grade of 
faculties. We impersonate potential realities which 
are beyond sense in order to bring them down to 
sense, and so make the problem an absurdity, or a 
mystery. The impersonated symbol being only a 
temporary makeshift for rude understandings, should 
be cast away as soon as we have gained mental power 
to see the Truth under its own proper form. First 
causes are composed of potential and material ele- 
ments which become one in the act of Becoming. If we 



38 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 

impersonate these elements, as Infinities, we have the 
Father and Mother {mater dea — matter), who begot 
a Son, who made the world. Here we get the Three 
fundamental ideas or principles which were used to 
create man, and the world. They are here presented 
under their scientific as well as their mythic form, 
but they are the real equivalents of the ancient idea 
of the creation of existence by personal causation. 

42. It is not difficult to understand how the Word, 
who made the world, or, in other words, the idea of a 
First Cause, became attached to the personality of 
Christ by the metaphysical subtlety of the early 
Fathers of the Church. Whilst we find St. Paul 
saying intelligibly " that Christ was declared to be 
the Son of God through the spirit of holiness," on the 
other hand, St. John says that the Word is the Son 
of God. Hence Christ and the Word must be the 
same from the axiom, "Quae sunt idem uni tertio, sunt 
idem inter se." But as the Word represents First 
Causation, if we make a person of this idea, as they 
did of old, we make it the Son of God. Hence Christ 
is the Word and Son of God who made the world, 
which explains his divinity and demiurgic Godhead, 
as contained in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel. 

43. It was thus in the antique world, when man's 
intellectual powers were undeveloped and untrained, 
they made ideas persons who spoke and acted, and 
the remains of this custom still largely pervade our 



Dual Constitution of First Causation. 39 

modes of modern religious thought. It was the most 
characteristic feature of all primitive ages, Pagan as 
well as Christian, to confound together ideas of one 
order with perceptions of another. These impersonated 
ideas were mixed up with the thoughts and actuali- 
ties of daily life, and regarded as external realities, 
which they never were, nor are now. The inner life 
of man teems with abstract ideals which we are com- 
pelled by a law of our nature to realise as external 
objects. They are cerebral excitements which must 
be expended under an outward form through the 
Sensory and Motor apparatus. In this way the crude 
metaphysical and mystic ideas of the early Christian 
thinkers were externally correlated with the persons 
of the Trinity, and their moral instincts with the 
events, ways, and teachings of Christ's momentous 
life. It was from the same mental necessity the 
Athenians were better pleased with Pallas Athene 
than with the yovs of Anaxagoras, or the Providence 
of Socrates. Men are always more satisfied with 
external representation than with abstract ideas. 

44. We are scarcely aware, however, when we make 
God a person, that we are guilty of the first degree of 
anthropomorphism. We are substituting in our igno- 
rance a finite image of our own consciousness for the 
Infinite Being. Whether the image be made by our 
imagination or by our hands it is equally idolatry, dif- 
fering not in kind but in degree. A person being a self- 



40 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 

conscious aggregation of parts, powers, and sympa- 
thies, is necessarily conditioned in the highest degree. 
But God is absolute and unconditioned, and therefore, 
cannot be a person in any way known to us, except 
through the weakness of our understandings. When 
examined, divine personality is the sense and reflex 
idea of our own selves taken from our consciousness 
and transferred to the Potential Infinite, just as in 
old times they made a person of the idea of First 
Causation and attached it to Christ, as already men- 
tioned. In the one case, we make God, Man ; in the 
other, Ave make Man, God. Faith has now no longer 
need of these lower intellectual forms. There is this 
difference between the theologian and the philosopher 
in the matter of revelation. Both start from God. 
The first on the faith of tradition makes all tran- 
scendental truths come personally to man by miracle 
and intermittent communication. The other accounts 
for the same religious knowledge through regular 
organic development of the primitive type of race, 
whose powers remain latent during the ages in a 
potential state, until developed into actuality by 
favourable circumstances in the fulness of time. INIan 
never feels at rest under the tension of unaccom- 
plished development. There is no doubt, therefore, 
that the principle of certitude is better placed on 
a scientific basis than on a supernatural one. 

45. We want now, not the old Greco-Byzantine 
modes of thought and expression belonging to the 



Dual Constitution of First Causation. 41 

fourth century, but their equivalents in modern ideas, 
as far as there is truth in them, for we are now 
hving in the period of the Renascence of rehgious 
thought. The Word thus interpreted by our better 
lights would be the causative power which underlies 
all existence and all knowledge. Inseparably united 
to its subject of inherence which we call matter, it is 
the Christ in us, full of grace and truth. It is the will 
of man, thought, consciousness, and life. It speaks 
as law, and is the force which moves the universe. 
Ever immanent, invisible and everlasting, First Causa- 
tion is the Beginning of Existence in space and time 
from the unmanifested Infinite. It dwells in our 
consciousness as an idea, and constitutes the unity 
and objective synthesis of the universe commensurate 
with ourselves. In the Bible, it is the impersonated 
form of the Living God, the Lord of Life. In Com- 
parative Philosophy, it is the Binary principle of 
Pythagoras, the apyj] of the early Greek thinkers, the 
Becoming of Heraclitus, the Finite Unity of Par- 
menides {tov Kara Xoyov hbs), and the Xoyos of Plato. 
It is the esoteric signification of the yvSxns of the first 
Gnostics, that is, the mediate knowledge of God 
through reason, as the Word, in contradistinction to 
the immediate belief of God through faith of the 
Apostles and Fathers — two sides of truth which the 
education of the people will one day blend together. 
Again, it underlies the Real and Ideal polarities of 
Schelling ; man and the world, as subject and object, 



42 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 

being identified in the unity of First Causation, of 
which they are co-ordinate effects ; and also, Hegel's 
law of the Identity of Contraries — of Being and Non- 
Being — of God and Matter ; for what is their act of 
union — the Becoming — but the formation of a cause ; 
and their identity, but the effect of that cause ? and 
again, what is his " Negation of an Idea " {an sich) 
in process of development, but the analysis of its con- 
stituent elements {anders-seyii), and his " Negation of 
the Negation," but their synthesis back again into 
the original idea {an-7md-fur-sicJi-seyii) subject to the 
law of causation ? 

46. Strive as we will, all our perceptions, ideas, 
and intuitions are only compounds of our own selves 
and our own external world. If we try and break 
through these bounds, and bring, as we vainly sup- 
pose, supernatural revelation to our aid, it will always 
be found that we still only make God in our own 
form and image, and make him tell us only the same 
things and the same truths which already potentially 
exist, and will alwa5^s so exist, in our own selves. 
The subject cannot know more than the faculties 
which are in him, and the limit of our knowledge is 
First Causation. We have no intellectual faculties 
to comprehend the Infinities of God and Matter. 
They are beyond perception and reason. They are 
apprehended by our psychical sense, or intuition, as the 
Objective Infinite, devoid of form and individualit}-. 



OUR EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL OBJECTIVITY. 

47. We have seen in a former paper that though 
ideas and perceptions are analogous and concordant, 
still they are not identical, from the fact of there being 
more elements employed in the causation of per- 
ceptions than of ideas, and this was owing to the 
actual presence of external noumena in perception, 
involving excitements in the sensory apparatus and the 
Sensory Tracts of the Medulla Oblongata, which was 
not the case in ideation ; this mental process being 
confined to the reflex action of the Anterior Lobes of 
the brain, of which the equivalent expression is 
metaphysically known as that of Subject and Object. 

48. There exist therefore in ourselves connected 
with that part of our mental consciousness called the 
Subject, two relati9ns of Objectivity, one internal, 
expressive of our ideas, and the other external, ex- 
pressive of our perceptions ; so that in analysing and 
estimating knowledge, it is of the utmost moment 
to distinguish whether it consists of ideas relating to 
our internal experience, or of perceptions relating to our 
external experience, or whether the two objectivities 
are confused together in one result, and that result 
attributed solely to one source without our being 



44 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

conscious of the intermixture ; in other words, 
whether we do not confound the mere ideal product 
with the external realities of perception, and so ac- 
quire knowledge of a spurious kind. It is therefore 
the first step in philosophical inquiry to distinguish 
with precision between the internal and the external 
sources of knowledge, which brings us to the con- 
sideration of the two objectivities. 

49. When we take an introspective view of our- 
selves we are conscious of being doubly represented 
as Subject and Object, as thinker and the thing 
thought of, and besides this, we are conscious all the 
time of our being one and the same. The anatomical 
distribution of the brain corresponds exactly with this 
double representation, each duplicate hemisphere 
being carefully separated from the other by the Falx 
cerebri in order to isolate and fulfil its functions, and 
yet intercommunicating with the other through 
central organs of unity which contain within them- 
selves, as in a focus, representative afferent and 
efferent filaments from the entire nervous system 
{Corpus Callosum, Optic TJialavii). The external 
world of sense is thus brought into communication 
with ourselves, and ourselves with the external world. 
And all the terminal loops composing the Convoluted 
Sii^'face of the brain having also two sets of afferent 
and efferent fibres connecting them with the Callosinn, 
they are in this manner put into up-and-down com- 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 45 

munication with the rest of the cerebral system, by 
which means they are enabled to furnish their re- 
spective contingents according to the special cha- 
racter of activity peculiar to each organ, whenever we 
are forming our ideas, wishes, judgments, and wills. 
In other words, the great use of a double brain is to 
give objectivity to our ideas, one duplicate repre- 
senting ourselves as subject, the other representing 
the ideas present in our consciousness, both being 
identified in the products resulting from the union of 
the two in one, and both communicating with the seat 
of our personal sense in the Thalami. 

50. Thus, in recollecting and thinking, our mental 
system divides itself into two parts, or terms, repre- 
sentative of what are called " Subject and Object," 
and these correspond to the two hemispheres of the 
brain. And it is evident that the field of internal 
objectivity must be co-extensive with the powers of 
the subject, and vice versa. This fact, which we know 
through consciousness, is conclusively affirmed by the 
two hemispheres being identical in structure, and the 
distribution of their parts. When we single out by 
our will an object of memory or thought, if this be 
of such a nature as to comprise the whole extent of 
our knowledge, it would necessarily exhaust all our 
objective capacity ; in other words, it would require 
one hemisphere for its representation. But as we are 
conscious at the same time of thinking powers equal 



46 Our External and Internal OsyECTivirv. 

to the ideas and knowledge posited in the object, and 
that we can apply them with all our Will to examine 
the qualities and relations of what we are thinking 
about, it follows, that we think and form ideas by 
means of a duplicate mental system, which is exactly 
what we find in the anatomical construction of the 
brain. So that one hemisphere (the right one) sub- 
serving the Subjective, and the other, the Objective 
element of thought, the two together unite their ac- 
tion for the production of new ideas. It is true, until 
they unite dynamically as a cause for this purpose, 
they remain simply in a potential state, but when, 
urged by our will, they are roused into action, new 
thoughts and new ideas result. And this takes place 
collectively on a large scale on the scene of history 
as well as in individual cases. 

51. When we want to divine the character, and 
penetrate into the motives, plans, and counsels, of an 
opponent in war, diplomacy, or business, we. represent 
all these objectively within our own selves, in order 
to work out the solution we seek. We divide our- 
selves into subject and object, and set up a process of 
ideation, the result of which is, that w-e posit in our- 
selves another individual and all his affairs as objects 
to be examined and criticised by our own powers acting 
as the subject. We could only do this by means of a 
double brain rooted in one centre of consciousness, 
meaning the OpHc Thalami. All thinkers and in- 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 47 

ventors work by the same means ; so does the artist, 
the engineer, the mathematician, the orator, the poH- 
tician, and the lawyer ; and so does the poet, the 
mystic, the metaphysician, and the actor. We have 
Subject and Object in consciousness, and their corre- 
lates must of necessity be found in anatomy. 

52. There is little doubt that in perception both 
hemispheres are more or less employed, the objecti- 
vity being supplied by external noumena, and the 
thinking subject reduced to its minimum of partici- 
pation, but in ideation and thought, the objectivity is 
strictly internal, and caused by the presence of mental 
objects ija vorjTo). Hence the origin of the whole 
world of Universals, Reminiscences, Generic Ideas, 
Necessary Truths, and Innate Ideas. These are cer- 
tainly objects and realities, but they are internal ones 
and purely mental. They have no correlated objects 
in the external world, and have no external reality. 
Plato's "ideas" are thus products of internal object- 
ivity. They are mental existences only, abstracted 
from perceptive ideas deriving their origin from the 
union of the percipient with the external noumena ; 
and the subjective abstracting powers being fixed in 
the organism, as ultimate facts outside our causality, 
was perhaps his warrant for regarding them as eternal. 
Still, it cannot be denied that the results of ideation 
and thought transcend those of mere outward ex- 
perience, and that our ideas and our ideals when 



48 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

realised, play the greatest part in utilising nature, 
forming causes and designs, promoting civilisation, 
and enlarging the sphere of the finite intellectual 
horizon, in whose centre we are placed. 

53. But although universals, or generic ideas, are 
truly derived in order of sequence from external per- 
ceptions, yet owing to the stronger ideation of Plato, 
and the weakness of his sensory powers, he laid more 
stress upon internal objectivity, making ideas alone 
what he called " pure existence," in which individuals 
only shared in an imperfect manner by way of par- 
ticipation. It is true, when ideas become expressed 
in words or symbols, they assume an appearance of 
externality, and in the earlier ages of the world men 
believed this to be the case. They regarded ideas 
as external things and persons, taking up modes of 
behaving and acting in keeping with their several 
characters. It was thus that Zeus, as the idea of 
creative power, was the "Father of Gods and Men," 
and that Christ, as the ideal of our atoning conscience 
and our highest humanity, was singled out in later 
times as " the head of man and captain of our salva- 
tion." Comparative mythology is one vast field of 
this kind of intermixed objectivity characteristic of a 
certain lower phase of intellectual development. The 
subjective hemisphere, for want of control and direc- 
tion from an enlightened Will, transferred the Per- 
sonal Sense into the objects of thought. The mental 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 49 

operations, instead of being confined to the normal 
action of the Anterior Lobes, involved also excite- 
ments of the Thalmni, which being represented in 
the resulting product, engendered impersonations as 
an inevitable consequence. 

54. We cannot separate subject and object. They 
are both identified in sensation, perception, and 
thought. But the subject being a compound body, 
although one in consciousness, if we employ an 
impure percipient, the resulting knowledge will be 
tainted with error or peculiarity, according to the 
degree and quality of the impurity. We fail to 
obtain " liLinen siccnniy On the contrary, we get our 
perceptions clouded with the prejudices, ignorance, or 
imagination of the subject. Thus the passions and 
prepossessions of an age become reflected in its 
modes of thought and action. The percipient of the 
subject is charged with impurities of different kinds, 
and errors of perception and judgment result. In the 
first Christian ages the religious Supernatural pre- 
vailed. An overpowering sense of Wonder fills all 
the Gospel narratives. It bursts out in every page. 
We live in an atmosphere of miracles. Hence the 
contagion spread from man to man and age to age, 
and hence the origin of inspirations and revelations 
in the perceptions and convictions of the time. The 
mystic element -overbore the percipient intellect, and 
forced it to shape out forms and modes of action on 

E 



50 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

which it could dwell with satisfaction. Truth thus 
became mixed with the ruling sentiment of the Super- 
natural residing in the subject. Faith leaving the 
Infinite invaded the sphere of the objective Finite. 
When the subjective thus predominates, the man 
becomes the measure of things. So the Bible and 
the Nicene Theology are exact pictures and tran- 
scripts of the age which produced them. In short, 
through our double brain we are enabled to view 
transcendental ideas relating to causation and divine 
agency as objects within ourselves. From being in- 
ternal mental objects they become persons, existing 
apart from the subject, and, receiving a name, escape 
into the world as external objects. Hence the origin 
of the ideas of inspiration and revelation. Our ideas 
are first made objects, then invisible persons, and then 
divine personalities inspire our thoughts and reveal 
truths. A new world is created by degrees by this 
internal process, and generations elapse before the 
progress of thought unties the tangled skein of primi- 
tive times. These Impersonations are modes of idea- 
tion which spring from our vain efforts to interpret 
psychical ideas (faith) through the medium of sense 
and matter. 

55. We can now understand why Descartes' axiom, 
that "a true idea corresponds with its object," only 
applies to perceptive and not to generic ideas, and 
why the idealistic systems of Fichte and Hegel do not 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 51 

repose on a basis of complete reality, their reality 
being only internal and mental, and not externally 
objective. They ignored the world of external object- 
ivity as an independent, self-subsisting fact, and there- 
fore did not recognise that continuous practical union 
of ourselves with external nature which alone is the 
original source of all knowledge, even that of ideation 
itself We may be said to posit the world in one hemi- 
sphere of our brain, and to look at it with the other, 
and to do so likewise with our own selves, thus showing 
that Fichte's lesser identity of Subject and Object in our 
Ego is not sufficient, as it embraces only our internal 
objectivity, but that SchelHng's identity in the Infinite 
is necessary to embrace all Existence ; and showing- 
further that Faith, not Reason, as we have said else- 
where, can alone apprehend the external objectivity 
of the Potential and Material Infinites. 

56. Universals thus belong to internal objectivity, 
being nothing more than synthetic abstracts of our 
perceptive ideas, these ideas being themselves derived 
in the first instance from external perception. When 
we remount to the primary conditions necessary for 
these intellectual processes of abstract ideation, we 
shall find their seat to be in the Anterior Lobes of the 
brain. By their duplicate arrangement and free reflex 
action by means of the transverse commissural bands 
connecting together the anterior folds of the Corpus 
Callosum, they are shown to be the factors of that 

E 2 



52 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

correlated antagonism we are conscious of as subject 
and object, the objectivity in these cases being of course 
internal, and confined to those perceptive and generic 
ideas which are the products of the various poten- 
tialities residing in that portion of the brain. So 
likewise mathematics, logic, synthetic judgments, and 
our abstract ideals of sense, thought, and feeling, are 
truths and mental objects resulting from our expe- 
rience of internal objectivity, just as the facts of 
science and outward life are the results of our outward 
experience. 

57. There is no difficulty in finding many abstract 
or collective ideas figuring as entities or completed 
individuals, but which spring from internal objectivity, 
and are therefore without a correlated external reality. 
This has been already shown with regard to our idea 
of a First Cause. The same holds good with regard 
to those parts of ourselves we call mind and soul, 
which are not distinct individualities, but generic 
ideas treated as such. They are, strictly speaking, 
expressions of certain states of fact drawn from our 
consciousness. As, however, consciousness is not 
an ultimate fact, but a very compound product 
arising from the dynamic union of our several po- 
tentialities, the expressions can only signify certain 
collective mental phenomena whose origin and causa- 
tion we now know much better than in the times 
of Hume, not from consciousness itself, but from 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 53 

anatomical facts and particulars with which it is cor- 
related and conditioned. Mind and soul are thus not 
separate entities but parts of our conscious selves, 
and expressions of internal objectivity. This we have 
already spoken of as being dependent on the reflex 
action of the Anterior Lobes, but it is only by means 
of the Thalaiui, and their mode of union with the 
whole of our nei"vous apparatus, that we can demon- 
strate the constant element of unity and identity in 
our consciousness, with at the same time that other 
mutable element of multiplicity, both combining to- 
gether in one and the same Personal Sense, of which 
mind and soul are the popular expressions, according 
as they are applied to the intellectual or the psychical 
parts of our higher consciousness. 

58. Then we shall find that the rude mystic ideas 
of early times always found an outward expression 
under forms of external objectivity, producing spu- 
rious and fantastic knowledge, as exemplified in the 
impersonations and epic actions of the different 
mythologies, now ranging over the beauty and 
physical phenomena of external nature, and in later 
times representing the ways, the strifes, and the 
triumphs of the moral and intellectual forces within 
us. These myths and historical legends are all pro- 
ducts of intermixed objectivity, but significant of 
deep-seated truths and commanding ideas. We have 
them in the celestial charioteers, the winged horses, 



54 OuK External and Internal Objectivity. 

and the Empyrean of Plato, and we have them with 
still greater force in the grand Christian epic when 
in primeval times there was war in heaven between 
the angels of light and darkness — forth-shadowing 
imagery we can philosophically accept as archaic 
expressions of man's primitive field of consciousness, 
where his nascent reason, moral sense, and abstract 
ideals had to fight the battle of their supremacy over 
the rebellious demands of his animal nature. It was 
a long and arduous task for him to form his Will and 
his beliefs in conformity with truth and law. True 
knowledge can alone disentangle the underlying ideas 
from their poetical investiture, and so enlarge the 
sphere of our intellectual horizon. 

59. In our own day we have another illustration 
of the intermixture of the two objectivities in the 
doctrine of the external presence of Christ on the 
altar under the form of bread and wine. The 
Ritualists no doubt strongly possess the idea that 
Christ is so present, and believe it as a fact, just 
as the ancients believed in the actual presence of 
Nitmina in their shrines and statues, and just as the 
Roman Catholics believe in the Real Presence of the 
Host, when the bell is tinkling and the congregation 
are on their knees. Christ in these cases is ob- 
jectively present in the consciousness as an idea, but 
the objectivity is purely mental and internal, which, 
through ignorance and predominant subjective feeling 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 55 

they feel compelled by the law of expression to 
conjoin with its analogous external object. Like 
the rude people of old times, they intermix ideas 
with perceptions, and so vitiate knowledge, breeding 
superstition and undermining our faith in truth, 
reality, and the laws which govern perception and 
thought. 

60. If in thought the cerebral excitement should 
extend beyond the Anterior Lobes, a pure intellectual 
result will fail to ensue. Those parts of the brain 
which are in a dynamic state, and which then 
virtually represent the subject, will show their in- 
fluence in the new ideas. In other words, a strong 
subjective bias, or prejudice, will be incorporated with 
the resulting product. This was the case more par- 
ticularly in early times when men reflected on the 
power displayed in nature and in themselves. They 
transported their own personal belief and will into 
their ideas, and so impersonated the physical and 
mental powers which they saw operating around them, 
and which they felt in the depths of their conscious- 
ness. Force and LaAV are generic ideas belonging to 
modern thought ; but in the ancient order of things 
whose traditions still prevail, they were represented 
by personal divinities who were the external cor- 
related expressions of their abstract ideals. Hence 
the two objectivities were intermixed, and a veil was 
put over the face of knowledge. The recent dogma 



56 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

of Papal Infallibility is the apotheosis of the ideas 
of intermixed objectivity. 

61. But we have now to see that the highest and 
most complex mental processes of thought, judgment, 
and will are effected through the duplicate consti- 
tution of the brain in connection with its function 
of internal objectivity. Subject to the laws of our 
nature, in other words, to First Causation, we are 
organised to act with perfect freedom in the forma- 
tion of our judgments and our wills, and to take an 
active and conscious part in these operations. We 
can only do this by the division of ourselves into 
Subject and Object, without which no thought is 
possible. But as the cerebral hemispheres subserving 
these divisions of ourselves are identical and co-equal, 
and we are so constituted in consciousness as well, 
our freedom of mental action is a necessary con- 
sequence. It proceeds from the equality of Subject 
and Object in their correlated antagonism. We are 
ourselves the powers, the law, and the freedom, which 
are convertible terms. And when Ave have to con- 
sider and make up our mind, there is no doubt we 
are organised to decide according to what is right 
and truthful. This is the law of our nature, but it 
depends on ourselves in the exercise of our freedom, 
as more or less imperfect beings, to apply this law 
to our own particular cases. It is we ourselves who 
have to take the active part in accepting or rejecting 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 57 

the matter posited in the objective hemisphere, and 
by so doing to incur the responsibiHty of deciding, or 
not deciding, according to the laws of our mental 
constitution. And we are made to do so freely by 
this very equality of Subject and Object in ourselves, 
which removes every obstacle to our freedom, and 
to our not being conscious of it, whether, as one kind 
of person, we decide right ; or, as another kind of 
person, we decide wrong. In all cases, we do so 
freely and spontaneously, as philosopher, as the 
average man, as the savage, or as the criminal. 

62. But whether this freedom will result in a right 
judgment, or in a right course of action, is quite 
another question. Our determinations, which are 
antecedent and integral elements of our wills in act, 
can only be composed of the materials of which we 
are ourselves composed ; and when these happen to 
be more or less defective, it follows, that the resulting 
compounds must participate in these defects. And this 
brings us to the law of reparative reaction that is sure 
to ensue, whenever we depart in our determinations 
and wills from what is right and truthful, and from 
the appointed order of our mental and moral sys- 
tems. This means suffering, and natural and socia4 
punishments, as consequences, warnings, and reme- 
dies of our being in the wrong. These sanctions 
prove the law. Hence moral responsibility, although 
absolute as an idea of internal objectivity, is not so 



58 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

as an external fact, but is apportioned to the more or 
less perfect or imperfect state of each individual, 
which, being measured by an average standard, is 
practically determined and expressed in our laws and 
public opinion. This is exemplified in the classical 
lines: "Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor;" 
and in St. Paul's two laws of his mind and of his 
members : " The good that I would, I do not ; but 
the evil which I would not, that I do " — antagonisms 
between precept and practice in the formation of our 
wills and actions which are generally compromised in 
practical life, and often rightfully and truthfully, by 
an equation of the abstract ideal with the claims of 
the real. Man must live in all the integrity of his 
nature, and the whole brain be represented in mea- 
sure and season within the spheres of his internal and 
external objectivity. 

63. Education and training develop the propor- 
tions of this moral responsibility, so that it becomes 
the duty of every individual, and collectively of society, 
to call this power and this freedom of ours into action, 
as practically there is no limit to the right formation 
of our judgments, determinations, wills, and actions, 
and therefore to our contingent responsibilities in all 
the affairs of personal and social life. With the rare 
exceptions of disease, or malformation of the brain, 
every one is free, and every one proportionately re- 
sponsible. And this is only in accordance with com- 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 59 

mon sense, and with our internal and external expe- 
rience. 

64. When we have "made up our minds" as to 
what we shall think and shall do, we have formed 
that mental state which precedes the act of volition. 
This state is the result of an active internal process 
of causation conducted by ourselves as the conscious 
subject of one hemisphere operating freely on the 
object posited in the other. The potentialities of the 
two hemispheres unite together to produce the new 
ideas, new judgments, and new determinations, ready 
at once, or at a more convenient opportunity, to be 
realised externally in act by an ultimate union with 
our Will, and the executive apparatus of our senses 
and muscles, by means of the directing and co-ordi- 
nating functions of the Anterior Lobes, the Corpora 
Striata, the Anterior Pyramids, and their connections 
with the motor system. 

65. It Avill be seen from the views exhibited in 
these papers that to revive our interest in metaphysical 
and psychological studies, they must be grounded on 
the facts and discoveries of anatomy and physiology. 
The phenomena of consciousness must be considered 
as correlated with the structures and organisms of the 
brain. When consciousness, as a secondary fact, is 
unequal to inform us of what we want to know, we 
can then supply its insufficiency, or correct its false 
conclusions, by external evidence ; and on the other 



6o Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

hand, when we are ignorant of the uses and endow- 
ments of our cerebral structure and its complex me- 
chanisms in the productions of mental phenomena, we 
can then have recourse to the facts of our conscious- 
ness to help us in their interpretation. One source of 
knowledge is thus the verification of the other. In 
this way the unity and multiplicity of " the mind and 
soul" are admirably explained by the relations of the 
peripheral and internal component organs of the 
brain with the centre of our personal consciousness in 
the Thalamic whilst the anatomical duality of the 
brain reflects itself in the duplicated partition of our 
consciousness into subject and object in the processes 
of ideation, thought, and judgment. Again, the ter- 
minal loops of the grey matter of the convolutions 
with their interior concentric transverse bands, are 
nothing less than a congeries of magnets and elec- 
trodes connected by converging cones of efferent and 
afferent fibres with the Corpus Callosuvi, whose sub- 
stance indeed is but an aggregation of their apices. 
And these not only intercommunicate freely with 
each other on the side of their own hemisphere by 
the longitudinal bands of the raphe, and so make it 
in function a complete whole in itself, but also 
touch and prolong themselves into the corresponding 
apices belonging to the organs of the opposite hemi- 
sphere. They thus supply the anatomical mechanism 
necessary for the dual conditions of Subject and 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 6i 

Object in consciousness, and in conjunction with the 
Thalami, for the unity in multipHcity, and multipHcity 
in unity, of the Personal Sense, hitherto considered 
an attribute of the soul. Again, the mechanism by 
which our determinations are made volitions is seen 
to be provided by the efferent fibres which connect 
the cerebral vertex where our Will proper resides, or 
is supposed to reside, with the posterior folds of the 
Callosuju, and all it represents, and thence by its 
raphe with the Anterior Lobes, the organs of Sense, 
and the motor centres of the Striata. As soon as we 
have formed our determinations, the antagonism of 
subject and object, existing between the two hemi- 
spheres, ceases, so that when we proceed to execute 
them by our will, we do so with the brain as a whole, 
and acting as a single organ. 

66. It is thus we can seek for an explanation of 
the phenomena of consciousness in the anatomical 
structure and distribution of the brain. Up to the 
present time our knowledge of its localised and 
special functions has been by no means complete. 
There still exists the great hiatus between the dis- 
coveries of Gall and Sptirzheim and the results esta- 
blished by our scientific physiologists relating to the 
functions of the Spinal Cord, the Medulla Oblongata, 
and the great ganglia of the Sensory and Motor 
systems. This unknown intermediate region is the 
base of the brain, and that complex system of ganglia 



62 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

and commissural apparatus occupying the space 
beneath the hemispheres. The present attempt to 
assign functions to this unappropriated ground has 
been made by comparing together the facts of con- 
sciousness with those of anatomy, and referring both 
to one common causation, carefully tracing step by 
step the chain of connection from simple and special 
sensation to the final results of judgment and will 
through the different parts and mechanisms devoted 
to these purposes. By analysing effects into their 
component parts, and then synthetically putting them 
together again, we cannot fail to discover by this 
method the causes which produce the effects. 

6^. Suppose we are seeking to discover the means 
by which the varying states of expression and charac- 
ter are given to the eyes. We know beforehand the 
cause must be in the effect, and that the anatomical 
provision for this purpose must be found in con- 
nection with the optic nerves and the several cerebral 
masses subserving our mental and emotional systems. 
On a careful study of a section of the brain below 
the Callositm in reference to this point, what do we 
see t A general convergence of lines and bands of 
communication towards the commissure of the optic 
nerves. We see in the first place the pillars of the 
Fornix curving downwards to this very spot, and 
blending with the Corpora Albicantia, and the Fornix 
itself sending branches into the cornua of the lateral 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 63 

ventricles (the Corpus Fimbviatitm, the Pedes Hip- 
pocampi, Sec), thus putting the eyes into direct com- 
munication with the Posterior and Middle Lobes. We 
find also the Tcenia scniicircidaris of Haller extending 
itself to and from the same localities. The same 
must be said of the prolongations of the Septicm 
Liiciditin, and the anterior folds of the Callosinn 
which are reflected downwards, adhering to the optic 
commissure and becoming continuous with the Tuber 
Cineremn which is embedded within the commissure 
itself The Albicantia and the Tuber are thus ganglia 
of expression and intermediate organs of communi- 
cation between the interior of the brain and the 
retina. 

6^. On these grounds, therefore, it is assumed, 
that the parts just mentioned are the appointed 
means by which expressions of every sort are con- 
veyed to the eyes and features of the face, according 
to the cerebral excitements prevailing in our con- 
sciousness, the anterior folds of the Callosum con- 
veying those of an intelligent and intellectual kind 
from the Anterior Lobes ; the Septiun Lueidwn the 
higher emotional from the Superior Parietal Convolu- 
tions; and the Fornix and TcEnia of Haller the pas- 
sionate and personal from the Posterior and Middle 
Lobes ; Avhilst the sexual are conveyed from their seat 
in the Corpus Dentatum by the valve of Vieussens, 
through the ganglia of the Testes, to the origin of the 



64 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

optic nerves in the anterior ganglia of the Quadri- 
geinina. 

69. If we hke to test still further the method of 
analysis and synthesis with reference to the causation 
of an effect and the collation of the two objectivities, let 
us take the case of the Corpus Deiitatiim as being 
the seat of the amative feeling, and the Cerebellar 
Lobes as being the motor apparatus in connection 
with that feeling. What is more positive than the 
results obtained, and the fulfilment of all the con- 
ditions necessary for those functions ? The ganglia 
of the sexual feeling must spring from the Sensory 
Tract, and in such a way as to be in communica- 
tion with the reproductive organs, and with the 
reflex action of their nerves. The Corpits Dentatum 
does so, as it is derived from the Restiforni bodies. 
They must further be in close connection with the 
special sensory ganglia, and especially with those 
of sight, touch, and hearing, as inlets and feeders of 
the amative propensity. The Corptis Dentahtm is so 
in the strictest manner. They must have motor me- 
chanisms in connection with the motor tract for the 
display and performance of the various acts prompted 
by love and sexual desire. This is exactly the case 
from the connection of the Cerebellar Lobes with the 
Pons Varolii and the A7iterior Pyramids. They 
must be so placed in relation to other parts as to 
have excito-motory, and ideo-motory functions, and yet 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 65 

be subject to the Will and the voluntary motor system. 
The Corpus Dcntatitm fulfils all these conditions by 
the spinal connection of the Cerebellar Lobes with the 
Pons and the Anterior Pyramids, and on the other 
hand by its cerebral connection with the Qnadri- 
gemina, the Thalami, the Anterior Lobes,' dir\6. the 
Striata, and still further, through the Anterior Lobes 
and the Callosum with the whole Emotional system 
and the Will. 

70. Gall and SpUrzheim considered the functions 
of the Cerebelbun as thoroughly established by the 
immense number of facts observed by them ; but by 
their not apportioning what parts of it belonged to 
the propensity itself, and what to the motor actions 
connected with it, some doubts about these points 
have been entertained by scientific men, which, how- 
ever, will probably be dissipated by future observa- 
tions. Nor is it a very bold prediction to make, that 
in this region (say the Central Lobes), in union with its 
spinal and cerebral connections, will be found located 
the ganglionic provisions for that curious mixture of 
excito-motory, ideo-motory, and voluntary action 
which distinguishes the functions of the rectum, the 
bladder, and the uterus in relation to their own specific 
sensations, and the excitements acting upon them, 
from the brain, and vice versa. Who does not know 
Voltaire's witty story of the would-be suicidist and 
his lavement .■* 

F 



66 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

71. To conclude with these views of the two 
Objectivities. Before sensations and perceptions come 
out as thought and action, they go through a series 
of cumulative causations and transform.ations by 
uniting with the various potentialities of our mental 
system. As external impressions traverse the ana- 
tomical mechanisms, so do new parts become en- 
gaged, and their functional specialities conjoined 
with the correlated qualities of the original excite- 
ments, which thus getting more and more additional 
unions, become enhanced thereby step by step from 
perception to ideation and thought, and from thought 
conjoined with emotion and feeling to our determi- 
nations, wills, and actions, constituting those internal 
circuits of dynamic force and motion within the brain, 
which make up the phenomena of cerebral life, and 
which, when duplicated in special organisms mag- 
netically inducted, are the causative conditions of all 
consciousness, personality, and knowledge. 

72. As we proceed from the Known to the Un- 
known, our mental mechanism works according to its 
own laws, and follows a certain order of procedure. 
It is well known that voluntary muscular movements 
cannot be properly performed without first being 
stimulated by a guiding sensation. So in like manner 
it would appear that our intellectual powers in pur- 
suit of knowledge fail to act with sufficient energy 
and continuity unless they are stimulated by a strong 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 67 

mental emotion as well as by the noumena of the 
external world. This incentive emotion we feel as 
Wonder in its highest degree, and as Curiosity in its 
lowest. It acts as the mainspring of our intellectual 
system, and is ever urging us to bring the unknown 
within the sphere of the known, its ultimate function 
being to enable us to apprehend the Infinite as 
the external reality beyond the Finite. 

J'^. What we thus know through our conscious- 
ness is confirmed by anatomical facts, as the seat of 
this emotion resides in the coronal region of the 
Anterior Lobes, just over and adjoining the Middle 
Frontal Convolntions which subserve the highest fa- 
culties of our reason. We remain under the tension 
of Wonder until the objects of inquiry are under- 
stood, and assimilated to our previous knowledge, 
when it loosens its hold to be replaced by another 
emotion which is that of Truth. In this way we ac- 
quire constant accessions of truth and knowledge, 
and truth consists of two elements, the intellectual 
and the emotional, the demonstration and the belief 
which follows it. One without the other is defective 
and incomplete. We then rest in truth. The ten- 
sion of Wonder is so continuous and absorbing, until 
our intellect is satisfied, that if the objects of thought 
transcend our powers, we have recourse to secondary 
and provisional solutions of the difficulty to appease 
its insistence. To be " thaumatised " and dumb- 

F 2 



68 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 

founded in our ignorance is found to be a pressure 
beyond human endurance. But such is the tenacity 
of Wonder, and so strong the law of our mental 
system, that it pursues mankind from generation to 
generation until our causality is satisfied by the dis- 
covery of the true ideas and the true causation. 
Wonder thus becomes the parent of progress, science, 
and knowledge. It is a means to an end, which is 
truth, and truth is the conscious union of ourselves 
with ourselves, by ourselves, and in ourselves ; it is 
the union of ourselves with the world with which we 
are correlated ; it is the un-ion of ourselves with 
God. 

74. We never tire of having to study and admire 
the structure and design of the eye, the ear, the heart, 
and the hand, as intelligible means to intelligible 
ends, but all these evidences of synthetic causation sink 
into insignificance when we come to study the me- 
chanisms, adjustments, and dispositions which com- 
pose the human brain, where we see displayed before 
our eyes representations in matter of what we feel in 
consciousness, so that, given the functions and en- 
dowments of the parts, we can build up the mental 
edifice of our unity and multiplicity, see the means 
provided for knowing and internalising the external 
world, ponder on the details and provisions made for 
thought, expression, sympathy, and action, and feel 
how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, when 



Our External and Internal Objectivity. 69 

we can even show the structural distribution of the 
parts through which our highest attributes of free- 
will and responsibility are made compatible with 
universal causation, and we oursejves thus made 
fellow-workers with God. 



VI. 

NEW METHOD OF INQUIRY BY CAUSATION. 

75. As the principle of Causality underlies all 
scientific knowledge and certitude, it ought without 
doubt to be comprised in the true Method of Inquiry 
which mankind have not yet discovered, and are still 
expecting. But up to the present time metaphysi- 
cians and men of science not having clear ideas of 
what a cause consists, their methods of inquiry have 
proved inadequate to the systematic acquirement of 
knowledge. What is the Inductive Method but a 
system of inquiry based on the analogies and differ- 
ences of things, leaving altogether aside the precise 
relations of cause and effect ? And what is Verification 
but a repetition of inductive experiment, and so no 
method at all.-' By Induction, what else do we do, 
but proceed from the Particular to the General, from 
analysis to synthesis, and so abstract our generalisa- 
tions, laws, and generic ideas from a number of indi- 
vidual instances, these abstractions being internal 
objectivities, and the equivalents of the ideas of Plato 
and the Idee of Hegel ? Again, what is the De- 
ductive Method but the application of the General 
to the Particular, where from admitted truths and 
axioms we deduce new ideas and new results as 



New Method of Inquiry by Causation: 71 

necessary consequences? Having arrived at a know- 
ledge of general laws and principles, we then put 
them into practice. We pass from synthesis to 
analysis. We do not now, like the ancients, build 
aqueducts, but knowing the general law that water 
finds its own level, we conduct it, by a particular ap- 
plication of the law, through pipes to every part of 
our towns. We apply mathematical truths to practi- 
cal astronomy, and we obtain useful rules and con- 
clusions from logical propositions. We act upon our 
ideas, and ideas are pregnant with momentous results. 
^6. But the whole of our mental system is not 
comprised within either the Inductive or the De- 
ductive Methods. They exhibit a marked absence 
of Causality. So that these methods are found to be 
defective instruments in the investigation of pheno- 
mena and their causation. All things are caused and 
are effects, and so are the mental objects of our con- 
sciousness. As it is only by analysis and synthesis 
we can arrive at the constitution and causation of 
things, events, and ideas, so Induction and Deduction, 
which are the expressions of these partial mental pro- 
cesses, are themselves subservient to the higher law of 
causality, which embraces them both in one compre- 
hensive Whole, whether we regard them as applied to 
the logical world of ideas, or to the phenomenal world 
of events. Causality as the principle of all change 
and creation rules supreme, and in last resort is the 



72 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 

arbiter and criterion of human knowledge. It must 
therefore form the basis of the true Method of In- 
quiry. 

JJ. When we analyse the mental process by which 
we acquire knowledge, we are conscious of passing 
through different phases. These correspond to corre- 
lated anatomical mechanisms seated in the Anterior 
Lobes, which are put into motion by our wills and by 
external objects, just as those of our cerebro-spinal 
motor system act upon a special group of muscles 
(without our knowing the reason why) when we wish 
to do a particular purpose. No doubt the wants and 
necessities of common life . stimulate habitually the 
lower range of our intellectual faculties, but in the 
higher problems of theology, metaphysics, and na- 
tural philosophy, wonder and curiosity precede the 
active exercise of our Causality, or pure reason. We 
are impelled by the influence of this all-powerful 
sentiment to inquire into the causation of everything 
around us, and to be ever trying to solve recondite 
questions lying deep in the potentialities of our 
mental and psychical systems. To find out the causes 
of things we employ our positive faculties to observe 
and examine the qualities and relations of pheno- 
menal objects, analyse them into their component 
parts, and re-combine these parts again into the 
original Whole. We pursue the same course in the 
development of our ideas. They are mental objects. 



New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 73 

and as such possess potentialities like those of the 
physical world. They have their affinities, incon- 
gruities, unions, and causations, and logic is nothing- 
more than the presence of causality in ideation. 
When the process of analysis and synthesis is carried 
out in a complete manner, we obtain a knowledge 
of causes and effects, and when reduced to logical 
order, it constitutes the Method of Inquiry by 
Causation. 

78. It has been already shown in a former chapter, 
that by the law of causation we really and truly per- 
ceive the external world as it is, and that perception 
is not merely a subjective operation, but is the union 
in one of the external noumenon and the percipient. 
It was shown that we have no perceptive conscious- 
ness without the external noumenon, and that our 
consciousness was a blank and our percipient a mere 
potentiality without it, which cannot but be a suffi- 
cient answer to the scepticism of Hume and Kant on 
the one hand, and to the idealism of Berkeley, Fichte, 
and Hegel on the other. But now in making Causality 
the basis of a new method, claiming to be the true 
one, it will be well to recapitulate the axioms and 
propositions which have been more or less established, 
and which are necessary to be kept in view when in 
our inquiries after knowledge we employ analysis and 
synthesis as instruments of this method which claims 
the merit of ascertaining the constitution and causa- 



74 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 

tion of our ideas, and of the phenomenal effects of the 
external world. 

Axioms and Propositions of Causality. 

1. No causation can proceed from unity. 

2. A cause is the act of union in one of potential 

objects, more or less in number, for the pro- 
duction of an effect ; the act of union being 
the cause ; the union itself, the effect. 

3. Causes are dynamic ; effects are static. 

4. Cause and effect are synchronous, co-equal, 

and co-terminous ; therefore, do not stand in 
relation to each other as antecedent and 
sequent. 

5. Causes are in their effects ; and effects, in their 

causes. 

6. There is no causal nexus between the potential 

components of a cause prior to their act of 
union in one constituting the cause. 

7. The act of causation begins and ends in present 

time. 

8. The dynamic act of union, called the cause, 

terminates in the static product, called the 
effect, which then becomes a potential object. 

9. The uniting means, intelligent or other, be- 

come an integral part of the cause ; and con- 
dition the cause and effect in mode, space, 
and time. 



New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 75 

10. Although every cause is separate and distinct, 

all are connected together in a principle of 
unity and order deriving from First Causa- 
tion. 

11. There is no such reality as the cause of a 

cause ; or a chain of causation. 

12. Cumulative causations consist in the succes- 

sive adjunctions of new potential objects to 
the original elements until the ultimate effect 
is produced. 

13. Universal causation proceeds from universal 
potentiality of causation. 

14. The universe consists of potential objects in 

a state of unstable equilibrium which are 
continually uniting into causes and effects, 
these effects becoming again potential ob- 
jects, and so on for ever, in cumulative and 
synthetic causation as means to an end. 

15. Man, as a synthesis of Subject and Object, 

has power to form causes and effects out of 
his own potentialities, and those of the ex- 
ternal world ; in other words, his determina- 
tions and wills are both caused and free. 

16. Existences, or potential objects, having no 

power to originate themselves, are effects of 
First Causation. 

17. First Causation is God in act of union with 

Matter (the One in the Many) ; the union 



76 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 

itself being ° the sensible and intelligible 
world (the Many in the One). 
1 8. God and unconditioned Matter (Being and 
Non-Being), as the potential and passive 
elements of First Causation, are infinities 
beyond reason and beyond nature ; therefore, 
incogitable. They are apprehended by faith 
or intuition alone. 

79. When we examine the rudimental ideas of 
young nations as reflected in their myths, cos- 
mogonies, fables, and sagas, we find the first traces 
of the Method of Inquiry by causation. The early 
thinkers, ignorant and full of wonder, necessarily 
became theological idealists. It was the reflection 
of their unfurnished consciousness. Their ideas of 
the causative power in nature received a form from 
the personal sense and the personal Will which they 
found in themselves. A vitiating subjective element 
thus became intermixed with the results of their 
intellectual 'operations. Hence the age of the gods, 
and the belief of the personality of the Deity, which 
still pervades generally the modes of thought of the 
present day. With the progress of ideas men then 
became also metaphysical idealists in their en- 
deavours to find out the causes of things, as in the 
Schoolmen, and the natural philosophers of the 
Middle Ages, who, supposing causation proceeded 



New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 77 

from unity, embodied the causative power in essences 
and individual beings. They did not know, as we 
know now, that causes were dynamic compounds 
Hmited to present time. Seeking to solve the 
questions of causation by their own stock of ideas, 
and not by observation of external facts conducted 
by a logical method, both the ancients and moderns 
necessarily revolved in an ideal circle of spurious 
knovdedge, without making progress, or adding to 
the sum of truth. 

80. It is to the genius of Vico that we owe the 
investigation of the ideas of primitive man. He 
found them projected externally under sensuous 
forms, but by tracing them up to the fundamental 
principles of our mental system, and stripping them 
of the dress in which they were provisionally clothed, 
he penetrated beneath their false appearance of ex- 
ternal reality, and thus first laid the foundation of that 
philosophic criticism, which is now the proud dis- 
tinction of Germany. So that we may regard these 
theological and metaphysical phases of thought as the 
characteristic doctrines of the great Neapolitan. They 
have since been adopted by the Positive school in 
their theory of human evolution. But the Positivists, 
instead of recognising Wonder and Causality as 
legitimate and constant elements, have discarded all 
inquiry into causation, and confined themselves to 
the co-ordination of phenomena and their gene- 



78 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 

ralisations. They repeat the error of Bacon by stig- 
matising researches after causes as mischievous and 
unprofitable. What is their hierarchical co-ordination 
of the sciences, however, but homage unconsciously 
paid to the law of cumulative causation, which, 
beginning with the simplest and most general laws 
and truths, ends with the most complex and most 
conditioned, until our subjective and objective syn- 
theses have been completed, and their correlation 
established in one identity ? It is truly the principle 
of causality alone which connects together the logical 
sequences of the co-ordinated sciences. 

8 1. It will now be seen that the theological and 
metaphysical elements which were discovered by Vico, 
and discarded by Comte, are necessary to establish 
a complete Method of Inquiry, the end and aim of 
which are to ascertain causes by knowing their 
effects, and effects by knowing their causes. In the 
mechanism of our mental system, the main provisions 
have been made, first, to stimulate causality by our 
wonder, and then to satisfy it by positive knowledge. 
To this effect the whole of our intellectual powers act 
in subservience to our causality, which may be called 
the court of final appeal in the determination of truth. 
Facts, phenomena, qualities, conditions, modes, analo- 
gies, and differences receive their place, value, and 
vocation from the judgment of this supreme arbiter, 
inasmuch as cause and effect being co-equal, their 



Nfav Method of Inquiry by Causation. 79 

true analysis and synthesis are absolute truth. A 
false issue cannot fail to be detected when tested by 
this unerring criterion. What is deficient is soon 
discovered, and what is too much, irrelevant, or 
incongruous is seen and rejected. So that by judging 
measures, opinions, and courses of action by the 
axioms of causality, we cannot fail to come practically 
right. Recollecting that effects consist of a multi- 
plicity of elements, and that the same elements when 
in a dynamic state, constitute the correlated causes, 
when we want to counteract a bad effect, or legislate 
for social, economic, or political evils, our course is to 
analyse the matter in question into its several com- 
ponents, truly and completely, and we shall exhibit 
the cause. Our remedy will then lie straight before 
us, and we strike with certainty and effect. 

82. Had this been followed in the case of Ireland, 
for example, we should have seen that the destitu- 
tion of the people was the effect of agricultural and 
commercial restrictions on their labour and industry, 
and that nothing but the abolition of these restric- 
tions could remove the cause of the evil. In a poor 
country, starvation and heavy taxes on agricultural 
commodities are inseparably united by the direct re- 
lation of cause and effect, so that the Irish question 
and justice to Ireland have still to be done. We have 
been taught so long not to consider a cause other 
than a single member, that our statesmen in making 



8o New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 

laws as remedies for evils never take the trouble, or 
indeed entertain the idea, of analysing the object im- 
peached into its component elements in order to 
arrive at its correlated cause. Should we else be so 
culpably tolerant of the growing evils of Drunkenness 
and Pauperism ? Should we else encourage drink- 
ing and dissolute life at public-houses, and at the 
same time exclude millions of the honest hard- 
working population from the enjoyment of our na- 
tional beverage at their own homes ? Would Parlia- 
ment else in its wisdom and justice keep heavy re- 
strictions on our home agriculture, and at the same 
time send us to seek food for the people in the re- 
motest corners of the earth ? Good laws and true 
remedies have unfortunately no party votes in Par- 
liament, so nothing is done, and financial blunders 
and laches are quietly ignored by the two great parties 
in the State. So difficult it is to make your practical 
statesmen with their strong sensuous perceptions 
carry out the enlarged policy of true ideas. 

83. These are instances on a great scale where a 
true Method of Inquiry would inaugurate immense 
and immediate practical results in politics and social 
life. But equal results in the world of ideas would 
also follow a correct appreciation of the fundamental 
laws of causation and the practical differences of 
knowledge existing between the objectivity which is 
external, and that which is internal. We should not 



New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 8i 

then intermix what are called subjective states with 
external facts, but keep each order confined within 
its own sphere. The national force of thought and 
feeling would not be directed into distant regions, and 
be more or less wasted in disproportionate results, but 
the vast pecuniary means annually flowing out of the 
kingdom would be turned into enterprises fitted to 
redeem and extinguish the miseries of our own 
working classes, and to administer to the enjoyment 
of their better nature. When we have no light to 
lighten the way, we do nothing. It is easy to yield 
to feelings of piety, charity, and benevolence, and to 
satisfy their importunity in a way congenial to our 
ignorance. But to do real and accumulative good, 
evils should be dissected and analysed into all the 
parts and bearings of which they are always com- 
posed in order to discover their correlated causes. 
We can then act with scientific certainty. The 
collective mental action of a number of men trained 
by a true Method, renders their decisions and 
measures most fruitful in results. If this be the case 
in difficult and complex social problems, a fortiori 
the same Method would act with more completeness 
and precision in all departments of scientific know- 
ledge. The never-ending discoveries of causes, and 
the power of forming them himself as the instruments 
of his Will, would then soon make man master of the 
moving powers of the world, and of his own destiny, 

G 



82 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 

and give him leisure to enjoy the totality of his very 
compound nature. It would bring out the maximum 
of his responsibility and free-will, as he must, under 
First Causation, and within the scope of his nature, 
always be the most important party in forming the 
secondary causes which produce actions leading to 
happiness. Truth and knowledge would make him, 
not free, as he is that already under all normal cir- 
cumstances, but they would make him as one with 
the facts and laws which dwell in his intelligence, and 
which operate for good or evil according as he obeys 
or disregards them. Thus Religion, Metaphysics, and 
Science are parts or platforms of one Whole, that 
whole being the identity and reciprocal correlation of 
ourselves and the external world in the potential 
infinity of God. The very stones we kick in our 
walks take us through the evolutionary stages of 
wonder, causality, and perception ; or, if we prefer 
taking them the inverse way, through perception, 
causation, and wonder. In our ultimate analysis, we 
shall find all things consist of potentiality and the 
matter in which it inheres. Wonder, as the sense 
of the infinite Unknown, is thus the beginning and 
end of all knowledge. We play only within our 
intellectual sphere, beyond which lies the unknown, 
and that sphere is limited by the range of our 
causality. 

84. In summing up the preceding argument, it 



New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 83 

is submitted that the Founder of Positivism has 
wrongly interpreted the phenomena he designates 
as the Law of Evolution. The theological, the meta- 
physical, and the positive stages constitute the nor- 
mal mental process necessary at all times for the 
acquirement of knowledge, for bringing the unknown 
within the sphere of the known. The theological 
and metaphysical must not, therefore, be discarded 
for the exclusive predominance of the positive ele- 
ment, which, to be in its proper place, ought to work 
in subordinate concurrence with the metaphysical, or 
the science of causation. Facts are only valuable as 
they are interpreted by reason, and thus made avail- 
able for future purposes. But reason alone is an 
insufficient instrument in the acquisition of know- 
ledge. It sees only the relations of things, and not 
their phenomenal qualities. It must have data to 
reason from, and reason up to. If it draws upon 
itself as it did in the early and middle ages, it ever 
turns in a vicious circle, and deals with mental pro- 
ducts which have no correlated reality in the external 
world. Its conclusions, therefore, under these con- 
ditions are often false, or of little value. Error 
necessarily abounds, because the internal and ex- 
ternal objectivities have been intermixed incon- 
gruously together. 

85. We cannot, therefore, too often repeat, that 
the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive 



84 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 

stages of Comte are integral parts of the mental 
mechanism which we employ in acquiring know- 
ledge. We wonder at everything we do not know. 
We then seek to know the cause, and thus bring it 
within our knowledge. To this effect we have to 
analyse phenomena into their constituent parts by 
employing our powers of perception and observation, 
and keeping in mind that the sum of the effect re- 
presents the sum of the cause. When we know the 
effect in its component parts, we know the cause like- 
wise. We now put together again by synthesis all 
the parts we have obtained by analysis, and we then 
arrive at the true causation of the phenomena, the 
only differentia between cause and effect being, that 
in causes the forces are dynamic ; in effects, static, 
or in equilibrium. We thus acquire knowledge by 
first wondering, and then satisfying our causality by 
observing and examining effectively the phenomena 
which have excited our wonder and causality. We 
go through the three stages at every acquisition of 
knowledge, the theological, the metaphysical, and 
the positive. Reduced to order, these constitute 
the true Method of Inquiry which embraces all 
science and knowledge. Our highest and most per- 
fect knowledge is essentially a knowledge of causes. 

d>6. If we now take a general review of Causation 
as it arises out of the potentialities of man and of 
nature, we shall find it pervading the infinitely small 



New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 85 

and the infinitely great. There is the microscopic 
nucleated cell uniting with the physical agencies which 
surround it, and there are the unions of the antago- 
nistic forces of the celestial mechanisms to be seen 
in the planetary orbits. There is the union of the 
external noumenon with the ganglionic provisions for 
common and special sensation, and there is the series 
of cumulative causations which culminates in the com- 
plex results of design, expression, judgment, and free 
will. The causations of numbers, gravitation, and those 
of chemical and mechanical force, are plain enough ; 
but look at the larger fields of cumulative causation 
displayed in the geological constitution of the earth. 
What are all the changes, processes, states, and combi- 
nations in art, construction, manufacture, trade, agricul- 
ture, navigation, politics, jurisprudence, medicine, and 
war, but innumerable instances of cumulative causation ; 
that is, the continuous and successive addition of fresh 
potential elements, and consequently of fresh causes 
and effects, in the production of the ultimate ends or 
results .'' In the same way we form, first, our determi- 
nations out of our own mental constituents, and then 
joining them by fresh unions with our powers of will 
and execution, we determine actions which are the 
effects of the cumulative causation. In this way, too, 
ideas and opinions become enlarged and developed 
in the lapse of time by successive unions with others 
of greater or less potentiality. So it is by cumulative 



86 New Method of Inquiry by Causatiox. 

causation that the growth of plants and animals takes 
place according to the synthetic composition of their 
several types. What is the progress and development 
of nations but the successive unions of the potentiali- 
ties of the races which compose them with those of 
the external surrounding circumstances ? And what 
is the history of man himself but the integral sum of 
cumulative causations and effects in the human brain, 
which will at last give him the power of a god to 
subdue the earth and fashion it to his ideas and pur- 
poses ; to be the enlightened master of himself ; to 
know the causes of good and evil ; and thus to fulfil 
his destiny by realising in their appointed time and 
order all the latent capacities of his nature, and those 
of his correlated world ? The intellectual instrument 
by means of which he will do this, is the Method of 
Inquiry by causation. As the master-principle, it 
will swallow up and incorporate with itself the subor- 
dinate truths and axioms of all other Methods. 



CASSELl, PETTBK, AND GALPIN, BELLE SA.UVAGE W0EK3, LONDON, E.C. 



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